How to measure and prevent dehydration |Horse & Hound

Dehydration not only affects a horse’s performance — it can also be life threatening. And we should take extra precautions during the summer months.

How to prevent dehydration

Have fresh, clean water available at all times. Do not restrict your horse’s access to water at competitions. If your horse does not like the taste of water when you travel, take some from home or flavour it with something like mint, apple juice or one of the special products designed to help horses drink that are now on the market.

For a horse who doesn’t drink well, a switch to haylage can be advisable because of its higher moisture content. This provides the horse with water and may reduce the risk of colic. Soaked hay will also help.

After exercise on a hot day, reduce sweat losses by cooling your horse off thoroughly as soon as possible after exercise. Once the horse stops sweating it will become less dehydrated.

At summer competitions, try to keep your horse in the shade. In hot, dry weather, your horse will lose water without you necessarily being able to see it.

Measuring dehydration

The gold standard test is to take a blood sample as this will reveal the level of proteins in the plasma and the proportion of red blood cells in the blood compared with the plasma. However, there are other, more practical, indicators of dehydration that you can keep an eye out for:

A horse that produces dark urine or who has not passed urine for some time.

The appearance of the mucous membranes – if they are congested and are red in appearance the horse is dehydrated.

For a long time the skin pinch test was used to test hydration levels. The skin, typically over the neck, is pinched up and the time it takes to return to normal is counted in seconds. However, several recent studies have shown that this is not a particularly good indicator of dehydration, so is best avoided.

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